A few hundred persons of the kind whose help is sought by this advertisement would have the salvation of the republic in their hands. But somehow those who have the leisure generally lack the desire; and those who have the desire generally lack the leisure. _Simplified Spelling_ After receiving, in answer to the invitation in our first number, a few bitter objections to simplified spelling, we have felt like apologizing each time we approached the subject. Perhaps the best apology we can make is that apparently the majority of our readers are interested in it. Therefore we hope that the others will tolerate as equably as they can, the devotion of a little space to it in the interest of the majority. Perhaps the objectors may ultimately be able to settle the difficulty as we and our house have settled another unconquerable nuisance--the dandelions on our lawns--: we have concluded to like them. Our recent correspondence regarding Simplified Spelling has developed a few points which we submit to those who abominate it, those who favor it, and those who, like the eminent school-superintendent we have already quoted, and like ourselves for that matter, do both: To a leading Professor of Greek: I am more hopeful than you that the repetition of a consonant beginning the second syllable of a dissyllable, to close the preceding syllable, as in "differ", "fiddle", "gobble", etc., _wil_ "be generally accepted", especially in view of the fact that it is _alreddy_ "generally accepted", and needs only to be extended to a minority of words. "Annutther" is not "a fair illustration". On the contrary, it is an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this said with a grin, not a frown!! You wil never get back to "the old sounds" of the vowels, in God's world. As to the long sounds, I am going in for all I am worth on the double vowels. I alreddy agree with the English Society on "faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for _niit_, and for spredding the _oo_ in _floor_ and _door_ into _snore_, _more_, _hole_, _poke_, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate in my own riting. You make enuf serious objections to diacritical marks, but my serious objection to them is that they ar obstacles to lerners, especially forreners. From his answer: